The Page 1 Podcast

The Page 1 Podcast is a weekly show that features a variety of guests and thought leaders on topics ranging from channel strategies, to tariffs, influencer marketing, best in class product launches, and all the details about how to accelerate your eCommerce sales with the big box retailers, or what we call rCommerce.

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EP8: How to Increase the Valuation of Your Consumer Product Company | Mark Dufilho, Managing Director, Houlihan Lokey’s Inc. 11/07/2019

EP8: How to Increase the Valuation of Your Consumer Product Company | Mark Dufilho, Managing Director, Houlihan Lokey’s Inc. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Cc2ZdUvmgI3MoGMFAnsyV What you’ll learn: We had a fascinating conversation with Mark Dufilho on how a business owners of consumer product brands can raise their evaluations pre-sale. He leads us through a crash course on how to bring a consumer brand to market and achieve liquidity for their business in the wake of China tariffs. About our guest: Mark Dufilho is a Managing Director in Houlihan Lokey’s Dallas office, where he is a senior member of the Consumer, Food & Retail Group. He has nearly two decades of experience providing transaction advisory and corporate finance services to small and mid-cap public and private companies and private equity firms across several branded consumer products segments, including branded apparel, consumer electronics, health & beauty, household & home products and retail. Dufilho graduated summa cum laude with B.B.A.s in finance and international business from Loyola University, and he holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Advisory and full service for MMA for middle market and private companies. Go to market “bankers only specialize in technology.” Focus only on consumer products… Help sellers achieve liquidity for their business Key takeaways from this episode: Background story of Houlihan Lokey, Inc. – 3:18 Biggest mistake business owners make when thinking about EBITDA multiples – 4:43 The true way to determine the value of your business – 5:00 General Breakdown of an EBITDA and a multiple – 5:11 The different types of investors and the types of return they expect – 7:07 How tariffs are impacting an investors evaluation of your company – 8:31 Are tariffs an appropriate Addback? – 10:26 Should you still take your company to market? – 11:27 How consumer product brands should approach buyer options – 13:00 Future analysis of our marketplace – 15:18 Which sales channel should you focus on to drive up your evaluation – 16:10 The benefits of building an ecommerce sales portfolio with big box retailers – 21:39 The most important 3 threes to focus on for a higher evaluation pre-sale – 23:34 Podcast Transcription Speaker 1: Welcome to the Page 1 Podcast. A twice weekly podcast featuring a variety of guests and thought leaders on topics ranging from channel strategies to tariffs, influencer marketing, best-in-class product launches, and all the details about how to accelerate your eCommerce sales with the big box retailers, or what we call rCommerce. Now here's your host, Luke Peters. Luke Peters: Thanks again for joining us on the Page 1 Podcast. I'm your host, Luke Peters. This is the podcast where I bring you the best and brightest leaders in consumer product industry that will help you grow your products, launch new skus, and grow in the big box retailers like Home Depot, Lowe's, Wayfair, and all of those other retailers that we call rCommerce. I'm the CEO and founder of NewAir Appliances where I cut my teeth for the last 17 years selling products online, and I've started a retail band where we can help other companies learn how to launch products, use influencer marketing to launch products, get reviews, gain traction, sell into Home Depot, Wayfair, Lowe's, Target, Amazon, and all those other sites. Luke Peters: And today I am interviewing Mark Dufilho who's the Managing Director of Houlihan Lokey. Mark graduated summa cum laude with BBAs in Finance International Business from Loyola University and he holds an MBA from Harvard, and I have met Mark in-person, he's literally one of the smartest guys that I've met. And thanks for coming on the show, Mark. Mark Dufilho: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. Luke Peters: Awesome. And anything else that I might've missed in your background that might be important for the listeners to know about? Mark Dufilho: No, you were certainly complete from an educational perspective, seems quite a long time ago now. Luke Peters: Yeah, I know, it's impressive though. And like I said, I had the opportunity to meet with Mark for about an hour a couple months ago. Learned quite a bit about how to think about my company, NewAir and how to position ourselves correctly. And so I thought that it's really a special treat for you guys, our listeners, who's mostly comprised of consumer product brands to kind of learn and get educated from Mark on how to think about correctly growing your business and positioning your business. Luke Peters: So today I got a bunch of questions related to preparing the company and I guess before we get started, I was just talking to Mark about this, again, what's interesting is you're in charge of the consumer products side of Houlihan Lokey, which is a huge firm, the biggest right, in certain deal sizes. You guys are like the number one deal firm? Mark Dufilho: Yeah. As far as the middle market goes, which is certainly deals below $1 billion in value, we execute on more than anybody else in the country, and actually within consumer products, irrespective of the deal size, our team handles more deals or M&A deals every year than any other bank in the country. Luke Peters: Yeah, which is incredible. And also the fact that... Like you said, that's your area of expertise and that fits perfectly into this podcast. So now that we've kind of worked through that part of it, why don't we start with something obvious, which I think a lot of the listeners might know. But if you can kind of give us a general breakdown of how multiples are reached from an investor perspective, whether that's a PE group or another firm that's trying to roll up similar companies besides just EBITDA, what are the types of things that might fall into that? Mark Dufilho: Sure, happy to. And maybe just to give your listeners a sense of perspective of where my experience or thought process is coming from. Our firm is a full-service investment bank, but all of what we do is advisory services, and within that most of it is in and around M&A and financing for middle-markets and private companies. And we go to market and deliver these services on an industry-specific way. So we have bankers that specialize only in aerospace and defense or technology or other industrial industries. Our team, which is about 70 bankers across the country and Europe are focused only on consumer products, in every sector of consumer. Whether it's food and beverage, pet, health and beauty, home products, retail, restaurants, et cetera. Mark Dufilho: And literally, what we think about day-in and day-out is the question you asked, which is EBITDA multiples and valuation. Because the vast majority of what we do is help sellers achieve liquidity for their business. EBITDA and EBITDA multiples is always an interesting topic of discussion. And what I found is the biggest mistake people make in thinking about that is that it's simple math. If I maximize my EBITDA and I'm maximize my multiple, I'll maximize my value. Well, there's truth to that, but the real truth is value is determined by looking at what the longterm, sustainable cashflow of the business is, and value has always been determined that way. Mark Dufilho: EBITDA and multiples are a simplifying language for people to very quickly try and ascertain value for a company, a group of companies or an industry, and then use that basis of comparison across those companies and understand why one business may trade at a higher multiple than another. What the multiple comes from is someone's belief in the sustainability and defensibility of that EBITDA and then the growth opportunity inherent in that EBITDA over a three to five to seven year period over time. And then the third piece, if it is a financial investor and the idea is to eventually sell that business again, whether they believe that EBITDA multiple can be sustained three to five to seven years in the future or will that multiple contract or expand over time based on the growth opportunities for the business. Luke Peters: Yeah, and that's a great explanation. And I was taking notes here and I wrote down, actually what I think might be the key point you can tell me, but value is determined by the longterm cashflow. And I've heard and read that a lot of investors, a lot of it is all about risk, more risk equals you're going to get lower multiples, lower returns, and more risk. And less risk is what investors are looking for. And that would feed into the longterm cashflow model, right? Mark Dufilho: That's exactly right. Every evaluation is an element or combination of the required rate of return and a cost of capital. Parlay it against what people expect those future cash flows to be. Which is why when people talk about debt multiples and leverage, and the higher the leverage, the higher the value. There is truth to that because what that means is that investor is able to replace higher cost of capital investments, the equity component, with a lower cost of capital, a debt component, thereby allowing them to pay more. Luke Peters: Makes sense. And is there a certain return on capital that they also calculate in the bank? That factors into whatever the multiple ends up being, because they're going to have to usually leveraging these companies up quite a bit or is that not- Mark Dufilho: Sure that is a cost that an investor is looking for? Luke Peters: Correct. Mark Dufilho: Yes. It depends on the type of investment that you're making. A venture-based investor is going to be looking for a significant return of capital and that tends to be a very high percentage return, 35%-type return, because they're trying to make multiples of their money because it's a much riskier investment, it's an earlier-stage company, it's an unproven concept, whatever the case may be. A more mature investor that's making investments, a traditional LBO or private equity firm, that's making investments in established and more mature companies is going to look for a lower return, because the lower risks that they're taking. Traditionally, they looked for 20%-22% returns. In today's market, you'll see that number down as low as 16% returns, right above where you start to see junior debt capital start to look for returns. So think of the stack as senior debt, maybe looking for 5%-6%, junior debt or second-lien debt, maybe looking for 8%-12%, and then equity starts to look for 15% on up. Luke Peters: Okay, awesome. And that's super valuable. Those middle investors, that would be also termed as, mezzanine debt, is that another term for it? Mark Dufilho: Correct. Luke Peters: Okay. And then something really specific just because of the world we live in with tariffs. Some specific questions related to that. Just because everybody that's listening here is probably in the consumer products, everybody's going to be affected by tariffs or not everybody, but most everybody. And when investors now... What they're having to look at isn't what they had to look at a year ago. So now we have tariffs involved, which could be driving down net profit. Luke Peters: So a couple of questions. Do you think tariffs could be, should be, will be, introduced as an add-back? Is that a legitimate add-back, especially if they go away in the future. But even if right now, would that be an add-back? And number two, how would those, could they negatively affect an investor's opinion because they're adding in some friction and some uncertainty? Mark Dufilho: Sure. So I'll take that in reverse order. Tariffs are absolutely a point of disruption in the market today. They're disrupting people's businesses and supply chains and pricing models and margin structures, no doubt, but they're severely disrupting the M&A environment, because there's so much uncertainty that they interject. If you're a private owner and a seller of a business today, and you fundamentally believe that these tariffs are a temporary cost, you're going to argue that a buyer should look past those and look at a more normalized view of profitability and assume those will go away. However, if you're a buyer, you've got to be thoughtful about what that tariff, how long the tariff regime can stay in place, whether it can get worse, and what it means with respect to a short-term versus a longer-term disruption of business. Mark Dufilho: And so what we're finding at the end of the day is buyers are placing a discount on value to accommodate either tariff costs or tariff uncertainty on a go-forward and sellers have been less willing to accept that discount. They're more willing to hold on to businesses and not sell at this point in time. We've not advised clients to try and add back the cost of tariffs. We don't think that the sophisticated investor market is accepting that, simply because there is uncertainty around how long they will remain. We are, however, advising clients to add back some of the truly temporary costs that have come because of it, whether it's a cost from excess warehousing or inventory carrying costs because a company bought ahead of a potential tariff impact, or if it's the resolve of the cost of moving a supply chain out of China into a non-tariff country. Those are temporary and one-time in nature and we believe those are appropriate add-backs. But there's far too much uncertainty around tariffs today. Just sort of wave a magic wand and say, assume those costs aren't there because we don't think they'll be there forever. Luke Peters: So and since the impact is so huge on first, a lot of companies... Especially in the 25% sector, does that mean or do you have an opinion on if companies should maybe wait it? Out because if they truly aren't add-backs and all things being equal, that's going to really hurt a net profit number or a multiple. Do you think most companies would be advised to wait it out or is it really going to be deal-by-deal and kind of up to the specific buyer? Mark Dufilho: Great question. We're generally advising clients if they material impact from tariffs to wait it out. Unless there is another reason why it makes good sense to look to drive liquidity today, and there's any number of reasons why that may make sense, be it personal dynamics, family dynamics, shareholder dynamics, other company dynamics underway. All things equal, were advising people to hold off on taking a business to market if there is material tariff impact on their business because buyers are placing a discount against that. And I have a personal belief that the tariff situation will get resolved. However, I think we're still looking at measuring time in terms of quarters and possible years, not months. Luke Peters: Yeah. And that was going to be my next question. And I was really optimistic at the beginning and now, I got to put my head down and we just have to run the business and plan like they're going to be here forever. And if they're not then everything's even better, right? Because a bunch of improvements will have been made by that point. But hopefully, for everybody they get resolved. Okay, great. Luke Peters: Why don't we move on to another... I know this is on a lot of people's minds and probably something that you talk about all the time, but let's talk about the, if you can kind of quickly describe how consumer product brands should be thinking about either working with a financial buyer, which is like a PE firm, right? Or a strategic buyer which might be another bigger brand. What are the different options they should be weighing when they consider those choices? Mark Dufilho: Sure. A lot of it comes down to where company and the seller is, in their personal cycle and ambitions as well as where the company is in its life cycle. There's sort of a general thought process that has held true generally by and large that a strategic buyer because of the strategic and synergy value that can be achieved in a deal is going to pay more than a financial buyer for a company. That thinking has actually been flipped on a ted a little bit. It certainly in certain consumer segments in the last couple of years as the private equity market has gotten more and more competitive and there's more money available and you've seen valuations go up. Mark Dufilho: What people have found is that, if they are at a place in their life cycle, in their company life cycle where they're not quite ready yet to move on to the next project and they believe there is material upside in their business, they can actually maximize their longterm value creation by selling to a private equity fund today, selling a minority stake, selling a majority stake and holding onto a meaningful part of the business, growing that business, using the assistance in partnership with a private equity fund and then eventually selling it. Again, this is the proverbial second bite of the apple and finding that that's far more value creative than simply selling 100% or something close that to a strategic buyer today. Mark Dufilho: The flip side is, there are certain categories out there, be it certain branded snack and branded food categories, beverage, health and beauty where the strategic buyer appetite given some significant trends that are taking place with their core brands in the market. Strategic buyers are paying extremely high multiples for businesses that in some cases are still fairly small brands. So we do see that as an opportunity to take advantage of what's happening to those strategic players and really capture some of that value early. But overall I'd say it comes down to the company's specific situation and and what their real goals and ambitions are. Luke Peters: Great. And also I'm kind of on that point in how buyers are looking to companies and given the recent drop or the cost of capital is getting cheaper, right? With the recent FED moves and also expected additional cuts, is that going to, you think push or drive the market higher even now that the rates might come down further and the lending might be cheaper or does it not have that much of an effect? Mark Dufilho: So all things equal, it certainly has an effect that if the cost of capital goes down, values go up. The flip side of that is one of the reasons that the cost of capital may come down. So rate decreases is growth is slowing and there's more uncertainty in the economic and the consumer environment. And so any value increase you may see mathematically from that is likely going to be offset or more than offset by a lower outlook for growth going forward. Luke Peters: Yep, makes sense. Okay. And now let's talk about channels and how much those... And before I get into the question, there's been a lot of talk or at least conversations I've had or with friends and stuff about how driving the volume and value of direct to consumer channel within a company is really important because that portion of the company will get a higher multiple than say an in store portion. Investors are more excited about the consumer or the brand owning that direct connection and sale to the consumer and being able to not have to rely on the big box stores 100%. So the question around this is, if you look at three different revenue streams... And first of all, does this even matter? But the question is around three different revenue streams. Maybe a company is selling into Amazon, maybe they're selling in-store and then maybe they're selling direct to consumer on their website. Should that brand owner be focusing on growing that direct to consumer channel even bigger just for the sole purpose that he or she might get a bigger multiple upon exit. Mark Dufilho: Sure. There's a lot to unpack there. I'll try and take it sort of one step at a time and do it efficiently. Luke Peters: Sure. Mark Dufilho: Channel absolutely matters. There's no question about that. Whether you are selling to a general merchandiser, whether you're selling to the grocery channel, whether you're selling to a specialty retail, whether you're selling to Amazon or... /episode/index/show/page1podcast/id/11952452

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EP6: Tariff Price Increases – From Product Supply Chain to Retail Customers; How to Get Your Price Increase and Become Whole 09/30/2019

EP6: Tariff Price Increases – From Product Supply Chain to Retail Customers; How to Get Your Price Increase and Become Whole https://open.spotify.com/episode/0FZQX6RzE9sqNHOn90gMnY This past May, the U.S. raised tariffs from 10% to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods and Chinese businesses aren’t the only ones feeling the pain. This was then raised from 25% to 30% in recent weeks. If you manufacture your products—or even just components of your products— in China, the new tariffs will hit you square in the bottom line. Fortunately, there are ways you can spread around the costs to keep your margins healthy. Host Luke Peters goes over how to survive these China Trade Tariffs through practical ways from going to your suppliers to helping pass along costs to your buyers. Podcast Transcription Thanks for joining us on the page one podcast. I'm your host, Luke Peters. And today we're going to be talking about tariffs. And as you know, I'm the CEO and founder of NewAir appliances and we are right in the middle of this tariff situation. So today I thought it would put out this small podcast, but show you guys exactly how we're handling the tariff situation and hopefully bring you some valuable, insightful information that you can utilize in your own companies. And for those of you that are not having to deal with the tariffs, give you just some better insight of these challenges that the tariffs are creating, which, which are huge today, I'm going to show you how we have a three step process on how we handle tariffs. At NewAir and with our new company Retail Band, you can learn more about hello@retailband.com where we can bring these services to other companies that need that help. We can show you guys how we handled the process the same way we do it here at new era. So let me just hop right into it. First thing about the tariff is to think about the three areas where you can drive the revenue back to your company. So first you want to renegotiate the factory cost. That's an obvious one. I'm going to get into actually how we do that and also even talk about results that we've seen. Next, you're going to go into logistics. There's tons of areas in logistics. We'll talk about ocean freight and domestic freight and a bunch of examples in between. And then finally you're going to renegotiate with your retail partners. And that can be tough, sticky, uncomfortable, but it's something that has to happen. And in this quick podcast, I'm going to jump into all of those. So first before I do let, let's talk about what everybody is saying and what is reality. Okay. So if you're watching the news you're going to hear that the factories are going to eat the cost and that all the product brands are going to be able to pass this on to the customer. And I can tell you that for the most part, that's not correct. Some of it is going to get passed onto the customer. It's going to be delayed and being passed onto the customer. It's happening right now for a number of reasons, which we'll go into. But I mean, these, the large retailers, they don't want these price increases and everybody can understand why and who's really getting squeezed or the brands themselves because the factories in China are also not taking on this full increase. They're not able to, PR prices were probably already negotiated down. The RMB hasn't really moved as much as the, like to make it seem like it's moved on. The media move maybe 5% from last year. And I mean, it's up and down all the time. So just depends on when you listen to this podcast and if you look at the past trend, so you're able to get a price increase in a factory and the factories definitely are, you know, in a partnership or helping out, but not to the extent that you might, you know, see on CNBC where everything is immediately getting passed onto the customer. So there's a big difference between what everybody is saying and what is reality. And I'll give you some specific numbers. I've talked to a lot of friends and everybody's pretty sensitive on, you know, kind of saying how much they've been able to get from their factories and also sensitive on saying how much they're average increase in the retailer end is. So what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to kind of aggregate those together and just give you a general feeling. And then with your company, hopefully you fall in this range. Okay. So we're not going to name any names here, but what I'm hearing is on the factory end, and this is probably a sampling of over 10 companies that they're seeing about five to 12% of a decrease. Okay. Some might see a little bit more than that, but what I'm hearing is about five to 12%. Most people are not getting as much as they thought they were going to get. Okay? That's just the general feeling is that they're not getting as much. And a lot of times because they had it, you know, pre tariff, they already had prices negotiated down. Who knows, maybe the factories are better negotiators. It's hard to say and it does change depending on the type of product. I've noticed that for products that are made outside of China as well, that the price decreases more significant. Meaning if there's manufacturing capabilities in Southeast Asia Cambodia, Vietnam, I just in those product categories then just a small sampling of companies I've been speaking to, I'm seeing a little bit of a larger price decrease. Okay. Now let's talk about the retailer. And so what we've been seeing and just again aggregate because it's pretty sensitive information, is that most companies are getting about an average of an 8% increase. Now this is going to be totally different across product categories. Okay. And so in the categories we're just a lot of my friends are in, that's kind of the increase that we're seeing now. Some in some areas they might have more control, but we're talking about if you're, if you're passing this on to a big box retailer that's about the, you know, the extent of the amount that they're taking. Keep in mind though, 8% on a wholesale price is more than 8% on your cog. I mean, I know I'm stating the obvious here, but we have to keep that in perspective. So that may be equivalent to let's say you know, 12 or 14% on the COGS. So you're getting a significant part back, but you may not be whole. And that's the key thing. And, and I think a lot of the retailers think that the brands are whole. They're not, you know, and I know recently just target, you know, there was an article where they're not accepting any price increases and and it's difficult. So, so I just wanted to kind of give an overall feeling of, of what I'm seeing, what I've heard and I think hopefully we'll put some of you guys at ease if you're not getting the increases and decreases that you would have hoped for. Now on the flip side, one thing I have seen is I've seen some companies and they've gotten their increases right away. We're talking months ago and then others it's taken longer. I mean, you know, even with my own company, it has taken us longer and it's a big frustration and we'll talk about that. So I'm going to get right into all of these details. Okay, cool. So let's start with the sourcing side. Obviously you're going to go get factory price reductions. That's the first thing you're going to talk about. But there's a couple of other things that may be less obvious that this is a great time to go communicate to the factories. The first one I'd say is, is probably your net terms, whether you're getting terms or not from your factories, you can probably get longer, more extended terms and you can kind of just increase your credit or AP by doing that. And while it's not a price decrease having an increased credit is valuable and you can quantify it some value to that. I mean, if you're dealing with the bank or have an ABL or you're paying a certain interest rate for a line of credit, now you can kind of push some of that, a significant amount actually off to your factory partners. Okay. So that's the first thing that I would work on. And definitely the feedback I've had and in our own personal experiences that you should be able to move the needle pretty good right there. The next thing to look into our volume rebates. So again, maybe you're able to get a certain distance with a price decrease with a factory, but then you can build in a volume rebate. And this is a great win win. It's a great partnership idea in the sense that, you know, if you're doing X million, but now you're doing, you know, X plus two or whatever it is, you know, 10 20% or 10% increase that there is a rebate and everybody kind of shares in the success. Their rebates can be huge motivating factor and you know, they can be pretty significant. And a couple additional percentage points right there. Other areas that might not be super obvious is packaging refinement and volume rebates. So depending on how you're working with your factories and how you're placing orders and how far out in advance you're placing them, if you go further out, you can probably expect some volume rebates on that end. There's a lot more you can do at a factory, but those are the couple of significant items that I wanted to point out. And of course just meeting in person, right? I mean don't go out there once a year. The more that if you have a team out there that's even better. But the more you're joining a dinner together and meet in your factories, you're going to get further along. So make sure your teams are getting out there. Now let's move on to logistics. So we're going to go through several different categories here and hopefully this will give you guys something to think about and where you can either do some cost cutting or refinements or increase efficiency then your operations. So the first, the biggest one I think is go re-quote your ocean freight. I mean depending on how large your operation is and how many containers you're bringing across. There's been a lot of changes recently. There's new companies, we've had some big success there recently and if you email me happy to share kind of suggestion or puts you in touch with who we're working with right now. Definitely the ocean freight's a huge one. You can also work in your drayage costs. Even your domestic shipping costs. I mean the, these are just obvious things, but you should always be re quoting these and, and getting the best rates. And then very obvious things is like on the operations side, of course you're going to go look at all your, your expenses. That's an obvious one, but how about this? Do you have a metric of efficiency for every single department? Meaning similar or akin to a P&L, but are you measuring efficiency to making sure that just because you were doing things a certain way last year, is that really the best way that you should be doing it? In example, would be this, like in customer service, are you tracking the cost that it takes you to handle every single call and every single email? These things are not that hard to set up. Once you put it together, you can select targets and then you can just make sure that you're running each department the way it should be and you're tightening it up. And also at the end of the day, what happens is you end up getting better customer service because you can measure plenty of other things. I want to go off on a tangent, but that's a good example right there. Okay. Quickly moving along. Marketing. Are you measuring your ad dollars? When you spend your ad dollars, are you measuring them at the SKU level? Again, sounds obvious, but most people don't do that. Okay. If, let's say you're working with Amazon and you're spending AMS, I know agencies after a while, you know their feet are up on the desk, you got to make sure that you're looking right down to the SKU level, not letting it go out too far with the ACOS. Don't getting tricked into just looking at the, at the TACOS, which is the total advertising spend and making sure that you're profitable and all that ad spend and I mean that that's going to go for your Google advertising or any other advertising that you're doing. And then we'll quickly move now down to sales. So in sales, obviously this is the items I went through were obviously operational and sometimes people don't think about those when they think about the tariff increase. And I just wanted to touch on those quickly. But now we're going down to sales and usually in the tariff conversation it's just talking about how much can I say from my factories and then how much can I pass on to our retail partners. And again, this model is more of like a, this is the B2B model, so it's if it's a direct to consumer, you can just raise your price right away. So this is, you have another partner, another big box partner. They're valuable to you and hopefully you're valuable to them. The first thing I would say is none of the big partners want to take a tariff increase. It's a challenge for everybody. The second thing I would say is you might have to stop shipments if they're not going to work with you. I mean you just going to have to look at your profitability and often they're not going to react well unless you show them how important it is to you that you have to pass this tariff increase along. And we've seen this with experience and it's in all of the different businesses and friends that I've talked to. It's the same exact thing. So you can probably expect delays in getting that increase in. And this is another thing that isn't talked about on the news. You know, they, the tariff increases go in and immediately, you know, they're advertising that they consumer prices are gonna go up right away. Now it doesn't work that way. Usually the brands eating that cost for months as it's trying to move it across to the retail partners. So anyways, I think that's one thing I, I just wanted to say is that this stuff, it can take a long time and it can take just a lot of back and forth a lot more than you might even expect. So whoever's managing the team is going to have to expect multiple calls and meetings sometimes with retailers, because I'm just, what we've seen our end is, you know, they say the price increases in and then you go and you check your actual POs and it's not, and so you have to go back where is the price increase? And then, you know, usually get a story about how, you know, there was something wrong with one of their systems and they got to go do it again. And this happens two or three times before you actually see it on your end. I don't know what the answer is on their end. I don't know why it's not going through the first time, but this is just the experience and the experience of multiple people. So I guess it's just that stickiness of making sure you go back. A couple of things is in order to get the increased through, remember these guys are your partners. They have to be making money and the retail prices have to go up. So you may have to pull promotions along. The way you may have to submit new MSRPs to retailers. A lot of this has to happen in concert. So what it might look like is that you're going to have to find a way to get your retails up. You're going to have to make sure that the bad actors aren't lowering the prices. You're going to have to probably hold off on promotions. And then through that you can make sure that your partners are making money, which trust me is very important because they're going to come back to you if they're not. And then hopefully you can get that price increase along the way. So, and the other thing is no one's going to accept the 25% it's, I know the tariffs had been happening in a while, and hopefully this is obvious to most of you guys, but it's funny how when they first came out, you know, some people want to just pass on the full 25 no one's going to accept that it's never going to happen. And that's why what a lot of brands are doing is they are creating new products. They're creating more valuable products for the consumer with, you know, extra features and, and other value adds like that. And then bringing a new product into the market. And when they do that, obviously they can factor in that extra cost and the tariff. And I think pretty much every single brand is doing that same thing. And so we're gonna see a lot of new innovation, new products. I mean, this'll be good for everybody. Unfortunately, they're going to have a 25% increase in the back end, but there is no way to get around that. Okay. And then, and then just to kind of finish off here, just a couple of things, is that the buyers are smart enough to know exactly how much tariff you should be passing on. Remember, they're dealing with so many brands, they're getting these calls all the time. They can compare how much your competition is increasing the price. And I think that's why it is really important to partner with them and understand where the individual per skew margins are for you and for them. And then create that Excel spreadsheet yourself, put that together, and then you know how large the tariff increase is going to be as you pass it on. So at the end of the day, they have a P and L that they're going to be managing all of their lines by. So they still have to be profitable. And of course, that's why it's called the partnership. So everybody's gotta be profitable at the end of the day and you can't pass it all on. But hopefully kind of these strategies that I talked about and a mix of ideas from the different companies that I've talked to interviewed will help you guys kind of understand different strategies you can utilize in your companies. And while most of these are, some of these might be obvious in the big picture, I think when you get down to the skew level or you get down to the different operational ideas, hopefully you got one or two ideas out of here that's gonna save you some money. And I guess what we're all for is that by the end of the year, these tariffs are gone. But I can tell you personally that we're just planning that they're not going to go away and who knows how long it's going to go on for. But that's how we have to run the business so that we're still in business in a couple of years from now. Anyways, hopefully this podcast was helpful and these ideas are helpful. We'd love to hear back because it's such a fluid topic, so it would be awesome to get some feedback on this in, in what's worked for you. Anyways, thanks for joining the Page One Podcast. Again, if you guys need help on your product launches, influencer marketing, growing B2B retailers like Wayfair or Home Depot or any of those other big box retailers, that's exactly what we do. We focused down at the SKU level and we can help you get speed to sale where you launch a product and you have reviews and influencers talking about it and you have sales in philosophy a lot quicker than you normally would with the traditional ways of putting products up there and kind of waiting for them to sell. Thanks again, have a great day. /episode/index/show/page1podcast/id/11452121